Scott Wiens: I got a question for you have you ever felt that God's calling you to do something?
Scott Wiens: I mean, he's giving you a burning passion to do something.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it's a move.
Scott Wiens: I know when God called my wife and I to move up here nine years ago, it was definitely a call.
Scott Wiens: It was a passion that was driven more than just the beautiful area of Knoxville, but there was a reason we needed to move.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it's a new job.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it's a change in your career.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it's to join a ministry.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it's to start a community group.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it's to join a community group.
Scott Wiens: There are times in our lives that God's going to place within us a strong desire to move in a certain direction, and how much we all know it's for his glory.
Scott Wiens: Right, that's when he gives us this passion.
Scott Wiens: There's an interesting scripture in Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 10, that says for we are his workmanship.
Scott Wiens: Notice there's a possession here his.
Scott Wiens: We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Scott Wiens: If we take that scripture for face value, that means that God has prepared for you and me things that he wanted us to do and wants us to do, and is going to empower us and anoint us to do all for His glory.
Scott Wiens: And when he calls us and makes us followers of Jesus Christ, we just have to realize that that's part of the package.
Scott Wiens: He's going to call us to do things.
Scott Wiens: There are very few Christians that sit on the bench.
Scott Wiens: We're not called to sit on the bench, but following His leading can be difficult at times, right, we know that.
Scott Wiens: But there's nothing more sweet than being where God wants you to be, regardless of how difficult it is.
Scott Wiens: Enter Nehemiah Last week we began a sermon series, as Tyler mentioned, on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, and we've called it the Passion Project.
Scott Wiens: And the more I've thought about this name, the more I love it, because, truly, god ignited a passion deep inside of Nehemiah to do something very, very difficult.
Scott Wiens: Kelly, kicked off this series, did a great job.
Scott Wiens: He titled his first sermon A Plea for Divine Help, and it was great because the first chapter of Nehemiah, divine help.
Scott Wiens: And it was great because the first chapter of Nehemiah, the majority of it, is recorded in Nehemiah's prayer to God, and it was wonderful.
Scott Wiens: He also gave us a little bit of a backdrop into Nehemiah.
Scott Wiens: I'm going to do a little bit more of that today too, just in case you miss that.
Scott Wiens: And, by the way, if you miss a sermon, I really highly recommend you go back, and especially a sermon that started everything off, because it really sets the tone for everything else.
Scott Wiens: So, if you missed the sermon, put up your hand.
Scott Wiens: No, I'm just kidding, we already know that.
Scott Wiens: We know everything.
Scott Wiens: But seriously, I really recommend that you watch it or listen to it online, because it would set up a lot of.
Scott Wiens: It was just a great setting for the whole message going forward, the whole series.
Scott Wiens: Well, we're going to pick up the story in Nehemiah, chapter 2, and we're going to read about Nehemiah's conversation with King Artaxerxes, right, and then we're going to read about him going to Jerusalem.
Scott Wiens: We're going to read about him examining the wall, running into some opposition and then rallying the people to begin the process of building the wall.
Scott Wiens: And I've entitled this a vision expedition faith in action.
Scott Wiens: Faith in action Because within this chapter, we're going to see five lessons about faith and action that's played out by Nehemiah himself.
Scott Wiens: And I am telling you and I told this to the prayer group before the prayer team I said you know, it's almost cheating when you read a chapter like this.
Scott Wiens: It's like that's the sermon, the whole.
Scott Wiens: It was just right there and these are just beautiful points, and my prayer is that these lessons are going to encourage all of us as we follow the calling God has given us.
Scott Wiens: So you guys ready for this?
Scott Wiens: Well, let's do it.
Scott Wiens: I'm going to give you a little bit more historical setting to this, just in case you missed some of the stuff that was covered by Kelly last week, because it's really important that you wrap your head around where we're at and what's going on.
Scott Wiens: So the whole setting is the kingdom, of course, of Persia and, as we know from Kelly, we've got a slave, nehemiah, who's a slave to King Artaxerxes.
Scott Wiens: Jerusalem, by the way, had fallen to Babylon almost 160 years earlier, in 606.
Scott Wiens: And we have a little timeline up here for you to look at that.
Scott Wiens: And, of course, when a conquering nation would conquer another nation, they would take a lot of them back into their country, into their nation.
Scott Wiens: Why, well, they wanted to acculturate them, they wanted to make them part of us.
Scott Wiens: We want to turn them into basically our own citizens.
Scott Wiens: But, of course, they were captives, they were called exiles.
Scott Wiens: Well, the Babylonian kingdom fell to Persia around the reign of King Cyrus in 539 BC.
Scott Wiens: And now the exiles were transferred from Babylonian exiles and now they're Persian exiles.
Scott Wiens: Right so you're a slave, doesn't matter who you're exiles right so you're a slave, doesn't matter who, you're serving somebody, right?
Scott Wiens: Soon afterwards, though, in 536, the Persian king Cyrus decreed that a portion of the exiles could go back to Jerusalem, and this, by the way, is all documented in Ezra, the book of Ezra.
Scott Wiens: 20 years after that first group was sent back, the rebuilding of the temple was completed.
Scott Wiens: That was in 516.
Scott Wiens: And now we're picking up about 58 years after that.
Scott Wiens: We are now here with Nehemiah.
Scott Wiens: Now, nehemiah, born in captivity.
Scott Wiens: He'd never been to Jerusalem.
Scott Wiens: That's important, by the way, because, you might like, we went to Australia with our oldest daughter when she graduated, or, excuse me, new Zealand.
Scott Wiens: We went to New Zealand.
Scott Wiens: I've been to New Zealand.
Scott Wiens: I want to go back.
Scott Wiens: It's a burning passion for me, although the plane trip down, that's not a burning passion for me.
Scott Wiens: But it was beautiful, right, but he'd never been there.
Scott Wiens: He'd never been there before, right, but he had this burning passion to go.
Scott Wiens: He was born in captivity but, by the way, he was probably a pretty intelligent person, he was probably pretty smart.
Scott Wiens: He might have been pretty good looking, and you want to know why.
Scott Wiens: I know that and I wrote this in my notes, because the king doesn't surround himself with doofuses.
Scott Wiens: Can I say doofus from stage?
Scott Wiens: It's okay.
Scott Wiens: No, it was really typically something that kings would do is they would surround themselves with the highly intelligent, the comely very beautiful people from the ones that he'd taken exile.
Scott Wiens: Daniel was a great example of that right.
Scott Wiens: We read that as, for example, goes.
Scott Wiens: He was the king's cupbearer and he had an unusually close relationship with the king himself and we're going to talk about that.
Scott Wiens: He was obviously very burdened when this delegation came back from Jerusalem, told him what was happening and the walls were broken down.
Scott Wiens: But it wasn't just the walls that were broken down.
Scott Wiens: The spirit in the hearts of the people that were there that had come back, that was broken as well.
Scott Wiens: And he just got this burden on him.
Scott Wiens: He just felt so burdened.
Scott Wiens: I'm sure those same people told a lot of other people, but for some reason Nehemiah was burdened and we know the reason.
Scott Wiens: Of course, god put that in him.
Scott Wiens: He praised that very passionate prayer again.
Scott Wiens: Wonderful message last week and God gave him this burden to go back and rebuild the wall.
Scott Wiens: So with that as a background, let's jump into Nehemiah 2 and let's understand and see these five lessons of walking in faith and faith in action.
Scott Wiens: So let's start in verse 1 of Nehemiah 2.
Scott Wiens: In the month of Nisan, by the way, it's Nissan.
Scott Wiens: It's not Nissan.
Scott Wiens: That's about March or April, by the way, of our calendar.
Scott Wiens: It's funny.
Scott Wiens: I remember I first read that it's like it's missing an S.
Scott Wiens: In the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him remember he was the cupbearer I took the wine and gave it to the king.
Scott Wiens: Now I had not been sad in his presence and the king said to me why is your face sad?
Scott Wiens: Seeing you are not sick?
Scott Wiens: This is nothing but sadness of the heart.
Scott Wiens: Then I was very much afraid.
Scott Wiens: Now you might say what's going on here?
Scott Wiens: Isn't it kind of strange that a pagan king cares about a slave?
Scott Wiens: I mean, think about it.
Scott Wiens: The more I read this, the more I thought this was a really unusual relationship.
Scott Wiens: But do you remember?
Scott Wiens: A lot of times, from here we talk about God's sovereignty, from here we talk about God's sovereignty.
Scott Wiens: Do you not think that God sovereignly placed within our exerces a connection with Nehemiah, because he knew what he was going to call Nehemiah to do?
Scott Wiens: So there was this deep relationship here which is he could.
Scott Wiens: Literally, nehemiah didn't say anything, he just saw that something was different in Nehemiah's countenance.
Scott Wiens: If you've been married for any length of time, your wife might come up to you and go what's wrong?
Scott Wiens: Nothing.
Scott Wiens: Usually it's the other way around.
Scott Wiens: I understand that, because they can read our face right, they know they can see something's not right, what's going on.
Scott Wiens: Well, that's what King Artaxerxes did.
Scott Wiens: So he really somehow had a deep relationship with Nehemiah.
Scott Wiens: That was pretty special.
Scott Wiens: And Nehemiah, he said, I was very much afraid.
Scott Wiens: Why?
Scott Wiens: Why would he be afraid?
Scott Wiens: Why, why would he be afraid?
Scott Wiens: Well, I'll tell you why he's afraid Because he had a burden and he had a passion, and now he had an opportunity and it was risky, it was very risky.
Scott Wiens: Do you realize that Artaxerxes could do?
Scott Wiens: You're gone that quick?
Scott Wiens: He had the power to put him to death.
Scott Wiens: He had the power to take this vision and this mission that God had given him and to crush it.
Scott Wiens: And that really leads to our first lesson of faith, and that is, taking a step of faith often means you're going to take a risk.
Scott Wiens: You're going to take a risk.
Scott Wiens: Slaves don't ask their masters for favors, especially big favors.
Scott Wiens: Nehemiah knew what he was called to do, but he also knew that he had a risk that he was going to have to take.
Scott Wiens: And he took it.
Scott Wiens: And that's really the application.
Scott Wiens: The application is so obvious for us.
Scott Wiens: When God gives you a passion for something and calls you to step up and face faith, it almost always means you have to take a risk.
Scott Wiens: How many people here can put their hand up and say amen to that?
Scott Wiens: Yeah, there's a risk.
Scott Wiens: Think about the Bible and just think about some of the examples.
Scott Wiens: Moses he's out there.
Scott Wiens: He's got a nice flock of sheep, he's got a nice wife, he's got a good father-in-law.
Scott Wiens: He's doing great Burning bush Come on, by the way, take your sandals off.
Scott Wiens: By the way, I want to send you to the king of Egypt and you need to ask him to release his entire workforce.
Scott Wiens: Yeah, risky, yeah, maybe right.
Scott Wiens: How about Abraham?
Scott Wiens: He was told to leave his whole homeland to go.
Scott Wiens: How about the disciples?
Scott Wiens: The chosen is really interesting when you see them.
Scott Wiens: It's interesting how they portray people being called and it's just like drop the nets and go.
Scott Wiens: There was a risk involved.
Scott Wiens: The apostle Paul was the one that really hit me here.
Scott Wiens: He is the champion of the ruling religious class, the Pharisees.
Scott Wiens: He was their champion, he was the one that went out there, he was the equalizer and all of a sudden he's now their mortal enemy and they're trying to kill him.
Scott Wiens: It's a risk.
Scott Wiens: I think of even Tyler and Amy.
Scott Wiens: When you guys came up here you've told the story before they felt that God was bringing them up here.
Scott Wiens: No job, he's pastoring, no job.
Scott Wiens: He just came and served the church.
Scott Wiens: He trusted God because he knew the burden God had given him and he came.
Scott Wiens: It was a risk.
Scott Wiens: I'm sure you had lots of conversations about that before that happened, but God is there.
Scott Wiens: One of the most encouraging passages about someone who was called to take a huge step of faith is found in Joshua, chapter 1.
Scott Wiens: Most of you know, of course, joshua was called to lead the people into the promised land, these wonderfully cooperative Israelites into the promised land, these wonderfully cooperative Israelites into the promised land.
Scott Wiens: And, by the way, he knew it was going to be a very dangerous and a very bloody task.
Scott Wiens: He was going to be outnumbered almost always, sometimes multiple times over.
Scott Wiens: But listen to what God said to Joshua.
Scott Wiens: It's so encouraging.
Scott Wiens: In verse 5 of chapter 1, god says no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.
Scott Wiens: Just as I was with Moses, so will I be with you.
Scott Wiens: I will not leave you or forsake you.
Scott Wiens: Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.
Scott Wiens: You might say, well, yeah, but God never told me that.
Scott Wiens: Well, a lot of times he does, and he does through validating the calling that you've got in many different ways.
Scott Wiens: If God's given you a passion and a burden that requires you to take a step of faith, it will almost always be accompanied by risks.
Scott Wiens: However, you must understand if he calls you to it, he's going to take you through it, because it's not for your glory, it's for his All.
Scott Wiens: Right, let's keep going.
Scott Wiens: Verse four and the king said to me what are you requesting, knees shaking, what are you requesting?
Scott Wiens: And I love what it says.
Scott Wiens: So I prayed to the God of heaven.
Scott Wiens: This was probably one of those really quiet prayers, you know, like when your child first comes and he says where do babies come from?
Scott Wiens: Oh God, please give me the strength and give me the right words.
Scott Wiens: Or when you run across somebody, like the other day, somebody confronted me about something, about my beliefs, and it was a little bit tricky, and I literally just I took a breath and no, I'm saying God, give me the right words to say to this person.
Scott Wiens: You have all said that type of a prayer, short, to the point.
Scott Wiens: God heard.
Scott Wiens: Well, that's what he did here.
Scott Wiens: And I said to the king if it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my father's graves, that I might rebuild it.
Scott Wiens: And the king said to me the queen sitting next to him.
Scott Wiens: You ever wonder why that was about.
Scott Wiens: Why would they say the queen was sitting next to him?
Scott Wiens: Maybe the queen liked him too.
Scott Wiens: Maybe the queen was like come on, let the guy go.
Scott Wiens: I don't know.
Scott Wiens: It was just interesting.
Scott Wiens: How long will you be gone and when will you return?
Scott Wiens: Because somebody's got to drink wine for me, right?
Scott Wiens: So it pleased the king to send me when I'd given him a time.
Scott Wiens: I always wondered what time did he give him.
Scott Wiens: You know, remember that wall was built in a pretty short time.
Scott Wiens: Maybe he had to hit that deadline.
Scott Wiens: And I said to the king if it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province beyond the river which is beyond the river Euphrates, by the way, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he might give me lumber to make beams for the gates of the fortress, of the temple and for the wall of the city and for the house that I shall occupy.
Scott Wiens: And the king granted me what I asked for the good hand of my God was on me.
Scott Wiens: We see the second lesson of faith here, and that faith in action often requires having a plan.
Scott Wiens: And Kelly preached that sermon last week about all the prayer.
Scott Wiens: Okay, think about this.
Scott Wiens: You think all that prayer that he was praying was just the prayer.
Scott Wiens: I think God was not only answering his prayer and giving him a vision.
Scott Wiens: I think God was giving him a plan.
Scott Wiens: Have you ever been praying something and you just feel like God's telling you to do this?
Scott Wiens: Oh, come on God.
Scott Wiens: No, literally, I'm almost positive that he had already planned this out, because he very succinctly told Artaxerxes what he wanted.
Scott Wiens: I always laugh when I think about the story of Abraham trying to stop the God from destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.
Scott Wiens: Right, and he keeps saying, well, what if there's 50?
Scott Wiens: What if there's 25?
Scott Wiens: But literally he was pushing the limits.
Scott Wiens: But there were limits God had given him.
Scott Wiens: He had a plan.
Scott Wiens: He knew what he was going to need.
Scott Wiens: He knew he was going to need the written approval from Artaxerxes or it wouldn't work.
Scott Wiens: He knew he was going to need materials to build this wall and the gates especially.
Scott Wiens: In fact, he says specifically I need access to the forest and I need wood, and we all know what the price of wood is.
Scott Wiens: Right, but he knew all this and he asked for it.
Scott Wiens: He had a plan and plans are important.
Scott Wiens: And I will tell you, from an application standpoint, a lot of people and I've been kicking around the kingdom for a while there's a lot of people that God gives them a passion and they love what.
Scott Wiens: They just feel this is what God wants me to do and they just start running and I applaud them for running.
Scott Wiens: But a lot of times they run into walls because they forget that sometimes you have to plan to carry out the mission that God's given you.
Scott Wiens: He's given us good brains, he's given us the ability to think, and we know he's going to give us the ability and tell us how we're going to go about doing that.
Scott Wiens: If God's calling you to teach, okay.
Scott Wiens: If anybody here is feeling that God's calling you to teach, that means you first must learn right.
Scott Wiens: If God's calling you to lead, then you need to learn how to lead.
Scott Wiens: But so many times we just want to do it.
Scott Wiens: Well, I just feel God's calling me to the ministry.
Scott Wiens: So where do I get ordained?
Scott Wiens: Oh, wait a second.
Scott Wiens: It doesn't work that way.
Scott Wiens: Well, it does sometimes, and then that's usually a disaster.
Scott Wiens: It doesn't work that way.
Scott Wiens: Well, it does sometimes, and then that's usually a disaster.
Scott Wiens: You follow where I'm going with this.
Scott Wiens: You need to prepare yourself.
Scott Wiens: He was prepared for Artaxerxes to say yes, and he knew exactly what to say and what to ask for.
Scott Wiens: I think of the early church when it comes to this.
Scott Wiens: When I was just preparing this, I thought about when they encountered the issue with the widows.
Scott Wiens: You remember that the widows were being neglected.
Scott Wiens: The church was growing just astronomically and some of the widows weren't being neglected.
Scott Wiens: Some were, and it was all this stuff.
Scott Wiens: So what did the apostles do?
Scott Wiens: They came up with a plan.
Scott Wiens: I'm sure they prayed about it, but they came up with a plan.
Scott Wiens: And the plan, by the way, the creation of a deaconship is still happening today.
Scott Wiens: It happens in our church.
Scott Wiens: They came up with a plan and they followed the plan.
Scott Wiens: They didn't just say God, please take care of those widows, they took action.
Scott Wiens: They had a plan and it's really important.
Scott Wiens: Now I will tell you that our plans should always be subject to God and his adjustment and realignment.
Scott Wiens: Sometimes our plans are somewhat humorous to God.
Scott Wiens: And I came across this clip and I just want to show you.
Scott Wiens: It's a clip from the Chosen, but it's got a little bit of a twist.
Scott Wiens: So watch the screen really carefully, we'll see.
Scott Wiens: Show me Impressive.
Scott Wiens: That is something.
Scott Wiens: But there's something didn't see that coming.
Scott Wiens: I love that clip.
Scott Wiens: This was Simon the zealot.
Scott Wiens: I should have set this up.
Scott Wiens: This was Simon the Zealot.
Scott Wiens: I should have set this up.
Scott Wiens: This was Simon the Zealot.
Scott Wiens: He had just begun following Jesus and he thought he was called to be Jesus' bodyguard, and so he proudly said look at this knife and you saw what happened.
Scott Wiens: So, yeah, sometimes God says, yeah, nice, try, but we're going to try this again and we're going to, and that's okay, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't plan.
Scott Wiens: Right, god's going to fine-tune that plan and sometimes he'll throw them away and give you another one, but he's going to guide us in that.
Scott Wiens: All right, let's move on to the third point Nehemiah, chapter 2, verse 9.
Scott Wiens: Then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river.
Scott Wiens: So he's gotten everything he needs.
Scott Wiens: Now he's already left, so there's a big space and time here, right, and gave them the king's letters.
Scott Wiens: Now the king had sent me with the officers of the army and horsemen which was, by the way, that was like an armed guard.
Scott Wiens: That's pretty cool.
Scott Wiens: He had his own secret service, it looks like.
Scott Wiens: But when Sanballat?
Scott Wiens: I have never run across a child named Sanballat.
Scott Wiens: We have a lot of women pregnant in here.
Scott Wiens: You want Sanballat, maybe no, okay, maybe not.
Scott Wiens: The name always cracks me up every time I heard it.
Scott Wiens: Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this.
Scott Wiens: It displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.
Scott Wiens: In this section we see the third lesson, and that is faith in action will almost always encounter opposition.
Scott Wiens: The reason I'm hearing amens is because they've been through that.
Scott Wiens: Sanballat and Tobiah were regional governors serving the Persian empire.
Scott Wiens: Remember this it's a vassal state, right, everybody was working for the boss, right, sanballat was a governor of Samaria and they think Tobiah was.
Scott Wiens: He was an Ammonite.
Scott Wiens: He was probably the governor of an area east of the Jordan River.
Scott Wiens: So these were pretty high officials, even though they were slaves.
Scott Wiens: They were.
Scott Wiens: They were conquered people.
Scott Wiens: Why were they against this?
Scott Wiens: Well, there's a reason why they were identified as an Ammonite and a Horonite Because these were conquered people.
Scott Wiens: These were people that Israel had conquered when they took over the promised land.
Scott Wiens: I think I understand why they don't like Israel.
Scott Wiens: It was pretty apparent why they didn't like him.
Scott Wiens: It was in their best interest to keep the Jews from unifying, as they knew that the building of the wall would essentially be a huge step towards the Jews regaining their identity as a people.
Scott Wiens: They knew this.
Scott Wiens: By the way, if you ever wonder, why did Artaxerxes let them go back and build a wall?
Scott Wiens: Well, remember who occupied Jerusalem the Persians.
Scott Wiens: If they want to go, build the wall for the Persians, so the Persians can protect their you know their space.
Scott Wiens: Sure, go ahead.
Scott Wiens: So it's not like Artaxerxes was worried about them, you know rebelling or anything although you'll hear later on that that's something that Tobiah tried to and Sanballat tried to accuse them of.
Scott Wiens: Right.
Scott Wiens: But if the Jews were strengthened, these people would be weakened, and you're going to see these guys throughout the rest of the book because they're going to constantly try to come against them.
Scott Wiens: The application is pretty straightforward when you think about this.
Scott Wiens: When God places a passion in us to do something for him, that means it's something opposite for Satan, and Satan will not be happy.
Scott Wiens: He will not be happy.
Scott Wiens: How many of you have ever heard the name William Booth?
Scott Wiens: William Booth?
Scott Wiens: Well, william Booth founded the Salvation Army back in England in 1877.
Scott Wiens: Salvation Army does a lot of great things.
Scott Wiens: My mother, by the way, who's in her late 80s, still serves at the Salvation Army in our little town in Saskatchewan.
Scott Wiens: She used her walker because she had a hip replacement.
Scott Wiens: The shelves aren't right.
Scott Wiens: Unless my mother gets a hold of them, she sets it all up.
Scott Wiens: But they do wonderful things and they've been going ever since.
Scott Wiens: But did you know that when he started the Salvation Army, there was a huge opposition from I mean from the press, from the government, from the clergy.
Scott Wiens: They wrote terrible things about him because he had a different way of spreading the gospel and it was offensive to some of these people who said, no, it's supposed to be done this way.
Scott Wiens: And he had a son, by the way, named Bramwell.
Scott Wiens: Now there's another idea for name Bramwell.
Scott Wiens: You don't hear enough Bramwells out there.
Scott Wiens: Well, his son's name is Bramwell.
Scott Wiens: And his son came to him one time and said Dad, what do you think about all the stuff they write about you?
Scott Wiens: And this is what he said.
Scott Wiens: I thought this was so wise.
Scott Wiens: He said Bramwell, 50 years hence.
Scott Wiens: It will matter very little indeed how these people treated us.
Scott Wiens: It will matter a great deal how we dealt with the work of God.
Scott Wiens: When you face opposition, realize that it's just opposition.
Scott Wiens: God's the one behind you.
Scott Wiens: Push forward.
Scott Wiens: In 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 17 through 18, this is what we read.
Scott Wiens: But we brethren, having been taken away from you for a short while in person, not in spirit, we're all the more eager, with great desire to see your face, for we wanted to come to you, I Paul, more than once.
Scott Wiens: Yet Satan hindered us.
Scott Wiens: This is a chorus that would be echoed time and time and time and time and time again till today, and it's still going to be echoed.
Scott Wiens: Satan will hinder you from doing God's work.
Scott Wiens: He will do anything he can, but what he doesn't understand and he's supposed to be so clever, he just doesn't understand that.
Scott Wiens: That just makes us stronger.
Scott Wiens: You want to know where the church is really growing.
Scott Wiens: It's the place where it's persecuted.
Scott Wiens: It's persecuted.
Scott Wiens: Satan is a defeated foe, but he will not go quietly into his fate.
Scott Wiens: If you're truly doing something that God has called you to do, you almost always will be attacked by the enemy.
Scott Wiens: But we're told through Scripture and a lot of you know these scriptures we're supposed to resist those attacks.
Scott Wiens: We put on the armor of God to protect us from that and we don't lose sight of what God's called us to do.
Scott Wiens: Expect it.
Scott Wiens: This is the thing that really blows me away sometimes is when someone says this is the thing that really blows me away sometimes is when someone says man, I started doing this ministry and it's just not going well.
Scott Wiens: I'm like good.
Scott Wiens: They're like what I said.
Scott Wiens: That's good, because Satan's coming after you Now.
Scott Wiens: It doesn't mean that sometimes you don't.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it's your own fault, you're doing something wrong, but you get the idea.
Scott Wiens: This morning it was funny.
Scott Wiens: I came in here all ready for this sermon.
Scott Wiens: We have electrical issues in the place, these lights are out, these lights are out and all this and we're going back and forth.
Scott Wiens: And I kind of stopped with the guys we were back in there.
Scott Wiens: I said you know what?
Scott Wiens: With the guys we were back in there, I said you know what?
Scott Wiens: God's the master, electrician, let's just pray and we're having church Opposition's going to come, but you just keep your focus.
Scott Wiens: Alright, let's move to point four.
Scott Wiens: We're going to read five verses here, beginning in verse 11.
Scott Wiens: So I went to Jerusalem and was there three days.
Scott Wiens: Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem.
Scott Wiens: There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode.
Scott Wiens: I went out by night by the valley gate to the dragon spring and to the dung gate.
Scott Wiens: Wouldn't want a house by the dung gate, would you?
Scott Wiens: And I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.
Scott Wiens: Then I went to the fountain gate and to the king's pool and there was no room for the animal that was under me to pass and it means the debris was so bad he couldn't even get over.
Scott Wiens: Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall and I turned back and entered by the valley gate and so returned and the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing and I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials and the rest who were to do the work, meaning I didn't tell the people that were going to be doing all this work what we were going to be doing.
Scott Wiens: It was kind of funny.
Scott Wiens: I didn't tell the people that were going to be doing all this work what we were going to be doing.
Scott Wiens: It was kind of funny.
Scott Wiens: We can see that Nehemiah is exhibiting the fourth lesson of faith in action, and that is wisdom, wisdom.
Scott Wiens: You can have a plan, you can take the risk, but you have to have the wisdom to move forward in that, isn't it interesting.
Scott Wiens: Here's this man with all this passion.
Scott Wiens: He gets to Jerusalem.
Scott Wiens: Man, my bag wouldn't have even hit my bed and I'd be going out looking at that wall and making my plans.
Scott Wiens: He spent three days doing nothing.
Scott Wiens: I really think what he was trying to do is just keep a low profile.
Scott Wiens: He was just laying low Because obviously you know Sanballat Tobiah they were after him already.
Scott Wiens: He just let things lay low.
Scott Wiens: He did his inspection at night so no one would see him, and he only went to a certain portion of the wall, by the way, and this was the area closest to the temple, and so he was probably just looking at that area specifically.
Scott Wiens: But he only took three people with him, didn't want to bring a lot of attention to him.
Scott Wiens: He was using wisdom when fulfilling what God had called him to do, and the application is pretty straightforward for us.
Scott Wiens: When God's called you to do something, yeah, you make your plans.
Scott Wiens: Yeah, you take the risk.
Scott Wiens: Yeah, you realize there's going to be opposition, but you should do this with wisdom, and wisdom sometimes can come directly from God.
Scott Wiens: Sometimes God's going to give somebody else that wisdom.
Scott Wiens: I love when I hear people this has happened before somebody come to me and I'm planning to do this and I start asking the questions and they've already thought it through.
Scott Wiens: They've gotten counsel from people.
Scott Wiens: They have a plan and, even though God might change it, they have a plan.
Scott Wiens: They're using their smarts, they're using their brains and that's what's so important.
Scott Wiens: You know, when Jesus says in Matthew 10, 16, to be wise as serpents and as harmless as doves, that wise part is really important.
Scott Wiens: A lot of times we just want to be harmless, but we need to be wise and smart.
Scott Wiens: Use our noodle.
Scott Wiens: God's given it to us.
Scott Wiens: Let's use wisdom.
Scott Wiens: When we do this, let's get to our final point.
Scott Wiens: We're going to pick it up in verse 17.
Scott Wiens: Then I said to them now, this is the big reveal.
Scott Wiens: Now he's talking to them.
Scott Wiens: Which are all those people he mentioned before here, the whole list, I think it was.
Scott Wiens: Let's see the nobles, the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, the rest of them that were doing the work.
Scott Wiens: So he says this to all of them you see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins, with its gates burned.
Scott Wiens: Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.
Scott Wiens: And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also the words that the king had spoken to me and they said.
Scott Wiens: They said let us rise up and build.
Scott Wiens: So they strengthened their hands for the good work.
Scott Wiens: This is so cool work.
Scott Wiens: This is so cool.
Scott Wiens: The final lesson about faith in action is that faith in action means we must communicate to others the vision God has given us, and we must communicate it effectively.
Scott Wiens: How did Nehemiah do this?
Scott Wiens: You can't miss this.
Scott Wiens: He does this so strategically, he said.
Scott Wiens: Then I said to them you see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned.
Scott Wiens: Excuse me, nehemiah, these people have been walking past these rubble and these burned gates for decades.
Scott Wiens: It was this way for decades.
Scott Wiens: He's pointing out the obvious.
Scott Wiens: It's like duh, we see that already.
Scott Wiens: But no, he's pointing it out for a reason, because he's saying this is what it looks like.
Scott Wiens: It cannot stay this way.
Scott Wiens: You see, sometimes have you ever done this, where you run into somebody, you're working with somebody, and they are mired in a sin so deep that they can't even see it anymore and they need to be given a vision?
Scott Wiens: Sometimes it's the church.
Scott Wiens: Sometimes you're working with people and there's a problem and you got a church and it's like we need to wait.
Scott Wiens: There's a need that we haven't been meeting.
Scott Wiens: We need to do this.
Scott Wiens: There's a need that we haven't been meeting, we need to do this.
Scott Wiens: And so he was showing them this.
Scott Wiens: It was beautiful.
Scott Wiens: He said come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.
Scott Wiens: This is really important.
Scott Wiens: He says come, come means join me, join me in this task.
Scott Wiens: He's calling them to action.
Scott Wiens: Remember, he's already started the action.
Scott Wiens: He's calling them to join him with this.
Scott Wiens: And he gives them two really solid proofs, which I find is really really powerful.
Scott Wiens: He says they no longer suffer derision by the way, derision when you think about that word.
Scott Wiens: See, they lost a lot of their national identity.
Scott Wiens: Now their temple got rebuilt, but when you come over the hill and there's Jerusalem, all these walls broken down, people, you know it's not good.
Scott Wiens: And so he says to them and I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also the words that the king had spoken to me and they said let us rise and build.
Scott Wiens: He gives them two solid proofs.
Scott Wiens: Number one he says God has told me to do this.
Scott Wiens: And you might say, yes, god.
Scott Wiens: I've had a lot of people tell me God told me to do this.
Scott Wiens: And you might say, yeah, Scott, I've had a lot of people tell me God told me to do this.
Scott Wiens: But then he proves that God told him to do that because the king of Persia has given him the double thumbs up and said he'll fund it.
Scott Wiens: See, he didn't skip that.
Scott Wiens: And, by the way, just to show you how smart Sanballat and Tobiah were or not, don't name them that, by the way.
Scott Wiens: They're not very smart people.
Scott Wiens: They literally their first thing is to say are you rebelling against Artaxerxes?
Scott Wiens: He already insulated them from that argument by saying Artaxerxes has our back and he's told us to do this.
Scott Wiens: He was casting a vision.
Scott Wiens: It was so powerful.
Scott Wiens: Nehemiah's ability to communicate his passion and vision caused both of those things to be transferred to the people.
Scott Wiens: You want people to follow you in something that God has called you to do.
Scott Wiens: You have to cast a vision and share that passion, and then they have to embrace it themselves.
Scott Wiens: Now you might say well, scott, I'm just not charismatic.
Scott Wiens: There are some people out there.
Scott Wiens: They just got this charisma, man.
Scott Wiens: They can just cause people.
Scott Wiens: I understand that there are some people that just naturally gravitate towards them.
Scott Wiens: We get that, we understand that, we understand that.
Scott Wiens: But that doesn't mean that you can't do something great for the Lord, because remember, in the end it's God.
Scott Wiens: If God's behind it, I don't care how gregarious you are.
Scott Wiens: You know what the strength finder is one of the things called a woo winning others over, right?
Scott Wiens: Well, god gives some people that gift to do that.
Scott Wiens: But don't just say, well, I'm not a woo, I'm not a woo, so I really can't do that.
Scott Wiens: No, you can share that passion, you know, I don't know if Brad Martell's not here, he's probably out, he's in the children's ministry.
Scott Wiens: Yeah, that's typical of Brad.
Scott Wiens: Brad Martell works for the Centers for Bioethical Reform and they go to campuses and they expose what abortion really is and, believe me, the pushback he gets is great.
Scott Wiens: Now, brad's kind of a low-key guy.
Scott Wiens: He's not somebody that you would.
Scott Wiens: He's not up there banging the drum all the time.
Scott Wiens: But God gave him a passion and it's I'm telling you it's addictive.
Scott Wiens: I mean to see what he believes in what he believes and what he's doing about it faith in action.
Scott Wiens: By the way, they get opposed all the time.
Scott Wiens: People scream at them, call them all kinds of names whatever, but yet he shows love to people and he does that constantly.
Scott Wiens: Yet he's not what you would call a traditional woo, so you can't use that as an excuse.
Scott Wiens: If God's given you a passion to do something, he's going to give you the ability to communicate that and he's going to be the one to strengthen you and to bring people to support that.
Scott Wiens: And, by the way, I don't care if it's a simple you're doing a community group.
Scott Wiens: I don't care if it's something like that.
Scott Wiens: I don't care if it's just even something like making the move, or maybe you're doing a community project of some kind, or whatever it is.
Scott Wiens: God's going to give you the ability to communicate that.
Scott Wiens: But again, you have to do your homework.
Scott Wiens: You got to have a plan.
Scott Wiens: There's nothing worse than someone sending up.
Scott Wiens: I'd like for all to help me do this.
Scott Wiens: Well, what's the plan?
Scott Wiens: I don't know.
Scott Wiens: I just got passion, you know.
Scott Wiens: So you see how you can't skip any of these steps.
Scott Wiens: Y'all they have to come together, do it together.
Scott Wiens: So what's ironic about today is that we're starting the community groups for this semester and you know, out there you've got people some of them were doing a community group for the first time, and these principles right here are really things that they can apply right now.
Scott Wiens: But what they did is they took faith and they took action.
Scott Wiens: God called them to do something and they're going to do that and they're following through.
Scott Wiens: And to me, I think this chapter is just such a wonderful example of what faith and action should be.
Scott Wiens: God gave Nehemiah the burning passion to rebuild the wall, and this example of faith and action is just such a testament that can apply.
Scott Wiens: It's timeless, it's timeless.
Scott Wiens: Faith and action is just such a testament that can apply.
Scott Wiens: It's timeless, it's timeless.
Scott Wiens: Faith and action is going to involve risk.
Scott Wiens: Faith and action is going to require you to plan.
Scott Wiens: Faith and action means you're going to probably encounter opposition.
Scott Wiens: Faith and action means you need to use wisdom which, by the way, god will give you and faith and action means we need to communicate that vision that God's given us with others.
Scott Wiens: Now, up until now, I've been addressing you individually in something God may have given you individually, but let me just say this Jesus gave us all a passion for one thing that is the most important thing, and that is to go to all the nations preaching the gospel, and these principles are going to apply to that too.
Scott Wiens: It's okay to plan that, it's okay to think about things, use wisdom, express that vision in multiple ways, but we have all been called to do that.
Scott Wiens: So, whether you're starting a ministry or you're doing something big like that, or whether you are just trying to figure out how God's going to lead you to share your faith with a coworker, these principles that Nehemiah has laid out are really effective for us.
Scott Wiens: Can you all stand to your feet and we'll pray, heavenly Father?
Scott Wiens: Heavenly Father, I am always humbled by the fact that this ancient book that you've given us is so applicable to us today.
Scott Wiens: It's timeless and, father, the preservation of it is a miracle oven by itself.
Scott Wiens: We thank you for the fact that the story of Nehemiah is something that was preserved for us.
Scott Wiens: And, father, we know that you didn't call anybody to sit on a bench.
Scott Wiens: You called each one of us to serve you in different ways.
Scott Wiens: Father, forgive us for the times when we haven't listened to you or we haven't taken up the passion that you gave us, that we were supposed to pick up.
Scott Wiens: Father, we repent of that.
Scott Wiens: Lord, we ask that we would be obedient and that you would speak to us.
Scott Wiens: And, god, we're going to make a promise to you, and that is if you give us the passion, we're going to take the step forward.
Scott Wiens: We'll take the risk, father.
Scott Wiens: We'll prayerfully put together the plan.
Scott Wiens: We will walk through the opposition with your strength.
Scott Wiens: We will use wisdom, father, and we will communicate that with others.
Scott Wiens: Lord, give us the strength to do that, and we know that we will be so much more effective for your kingdom.
Scott Wiens: And may your kingdom come soon, lord, and we pray this and we thank you for it all In the precious name of the one who set the example for faith and action, jesus Christ, our Savior, amen.
Scott Wiens: Thank you, be blessed.